


Elevator Music and Bittersweet Reunions

by that_one_british_alien_from_doctor_who (nancynotruth)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (just talking about history not actually traveling through it), And also an extremely bad liar, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Family Reunions, Fluff and Angst, I just really love Amy Pond, Lots of History!!, Mentions of River's death at the Library and the Angels Take Manhattan, Reunions, River being River, Rory and Amy being an adorable couple, The Doctor (Doctor Who) is a Dork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23115424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nancynotruth/pseuds/that_one_british_alien_from_doctor_who
Summary: All alone in the Tardis, with the Fam resting up at home from their latest adventure, the Doctor has a lot of time to think. She's gone through at least a couple thousand years of memories when she remembers the annual Pond family reunion at the History Museum, sadly cut short after two years. When the Tardis takes off without her flipping any of the fun leavers or making the wooshy noise, the Doctor is certain that her Old Girl is giving her a chance to remember her family.However, when her lift (which also doesn't make a fun wooshy noise, but does have a ton of great buttons to press) is boarded by the three people she's missed every day of two lives, and then comes to a complete stop between floors three and four, the Doctor has to make a decision about what's more important: protecting their timelines, or adding a rare spark of joy to her own?
Relationships: Amy Pond & River Song, Amy Pond/Rory Williams, River Song & Rory Williams, The Doctor & Amy Pond (Doctor Who), The Doctor & Rory Williams, The Doctor/River Song, Thirteenth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 35
Kudos: 222





	1. Speaking is Bad. Like Pears.

“Oh, brilliant,” Rory says, throwing his hands up. “This is so, just brilliant.”

“I don’t like this, Rory,” Amy says tightly, pacing the lift like a caged (and especially ginger) tiger. “River, can you just…shoot our way out or something?” 

“I could try,” River says calmly, stroking her hidden blaster. “But even I can’t make a shot through a solid wall, darling. And I don’t think you’d like it when I hit the cable holding us up, or even a passerby.” 

Due to the lift’s curvature, you would probably hit one of us instead, the Doctor thinks, but refrains (with great effort) from saying out loud. She crosses her legs and leans into the corner, trying to look very casual and extremely uninteresting. 

“Fine. Fine! I give up.” Amy abruptly throws her hands up, wheels around, and begins pacing in the other direction. “I just don’t like it. I don’t like being kept in itty bitty boxes and not knowing when I’m going to get out.” Rory catches her hand as she walks by, and she grips it so tightly that both their knuckles turn white. “This is not fun.” 

If Madam Kovarian had kept me in an itty bitty box for my entire pregnancy, I wouldn’t like being reminded of it either, the Doctor thinks sadly. Oh, Pond, I wish I could’ve gotten to you sooner. I’d have taken you away in my Tardis and you’d be okay. Come to think of it, I wonder why my Tardis didn’t upset you, too? Is it because it’s bigger on the inside? I like that feature, too. It’s so fun when people come inside for the first time and say “It’s bigger on the inside!” Except Rory. Rory wasn’t fun. Sorry, Rory. The Doctor doesn’t say any of this, either. It’s so hard, the whole not talking thing. How do other people manage? She doesn’t remember Rory talking a lot, but maybe Amy and the Doctor just didn’t let him talk, or maybe the two thousand years alone got to him. She’d ask him right now, but she isn’t supposed to be speaking. Speaking is bad. Like pears.

“We’re here with you, Amy,” Rory says, patting their joined hands with his free one. “I’m here, River’s here, that…lady over there, she’s here.” 

“Oh, right,” Amy says, shaking herself like she’s trying to get a Memory Beetle off her back and turning towards the Doctor. “Hello. Who are you, then?” The Doctor opens her mouth, closes it, and, after a moment, opens it again. Her brain, usually so good about these things, is completely blank. She’s about three seconds away from saying something daft like The Doctor or none of your business when (thank Rassilon) River breaks in. 

“Oh Amy,” River chides in her gorgeous, gorgeous voice. “Musn’t be rude.” Amy rolls her eyes dramatically as River turns to the Doctor, turning on her most charming smile. The Doctor, deprived of the trademark River Song smile for so long, nearly faints. “Hello darling,” she says, “I’m River Song, and this is Amy and Rory Williams. We’re here on a family outing.” 

“And when she says family,” Amy cuts in quickly, “she means that we’re all cousins. Not her parents or something silly like that. Cousins outing! Woohoo!” River shoots her a glare that obviously means shut up (the Doctor’s had that glare turned on her an uncountable number of times), and Amy shuts up. The Doctor is extremely impressed. 

With Amy silenced (now that’s something the Doctor is relieved to have behind her! Those creepy religious cults and their never-ending wars), the lift quiets to the tapping of Amy’s heeled boots and Rory’s soothing murmur. The Doctor almost allows herself to hope that she can get through this whole thing without talking, before Rory hesitatingly speaks up. 

“So, er, who are you?” 

Rory was always so good at understanding things. Why can’t he just realize that she isn’t supposed to talk?

“Hello,” she says, in her most confident voice, the one that she usually reserves for aggressive aliens, when she doesn’t know what else to do. “I’m the…I mean, I’m John…die. Jo..die. Jodie Oswald.” People keep telling her that she doesn’t look like a John Smith, but she doesn’t understand. John is a nice name, Smith is even better. But the Ponds had heard that name far too many times. 

“Hello, Jodie,” Rory says, cutting off Amy, who looks as though she wants to ask why the Doctor didn’t know her own name. Maybe he does have some use after all. “What brings you to the museum today?” 

“Oh, just a family thing, too. Just like you! I used to come here with my wife a lot, and her parents. The good old days,” she grins. I didn’t know they’d all be here too, she adds silently. 

“Are they here today?” Rory asks, and the Doctor is beginning to remember why he’d been their go-to liaison with any local people. He was nice, if just a bit boring. 

“Yes, actually!” The Doctor says, but then her face falls. “But I shouldn’t talk to them.” Don’t talk to them, she reminds herself silently, for good measure. 

“Why not?” Amy asks, finally interested. Even River raises an eyebrow (the Doctor had always wanted to raise just one eyebrow. She thinks it’ll probably happen when she finally becomes ginger). 

“Oh, my wife’s been spending a lot of time at the Library recently, and she’s in a whole other place. I mean, she is gone,” the Doctor says, flourishing her hands to drive home the point, holding back the sadness still comes whenever she talks about River. There’s time to feel sad later, when she’s alone in the Tardis. She can cry all she wants, then, and look at old pictures of the Ponds and hate herself. Right now, she needs to put on a good front and get out as soon as possible.

“So she gets too wrapped up in books to pay any attention to you?” River asks. “That must be dreadful. You should find someone who really appreciates you,” she adds voice lowering to a purr. Amy rolls her eyes even more dramatically. 

“Exactly!” The Doctor says excitedly, snapping back to the conversation and completely missing River’s innuendo. “Yes, brilliant! That’s exactly what she does.” 

“River!” Amy scolded. “Stop flirting. We’re right here.” River pats Amy on the shoulder consoling, still smirking as she looked the Doctor up and down, and the Doctor blushes nearly as bright as her Eleventh form’s bowties as she finally realizes what River means. 

“And your in-laws?” Asks Rory, staunchly ignoring the sexual tension in the lift. “Are they here, too?” 

“I think so,” says the Doctor. I’m not actually sure if I’ve married my wife yet, so are they technically my in-laws? “But they moved to New York, and now they’re completely out of touch. It’s like they’ve gone back in time.” 

“You mean they’re mormons?” Amy asks curiously. “And they’ve stopped talking to your just because you married their daughter? That’s not right.” The Doctor, again, felt validated in her choice of companion. That’s right, Pond, she thought. That’s exactly right. 

“Yeah,” she shrugs. “You know mormons, and their…anti-marriage…things.” 

“Really?” River asks, tilting her head, her wonderful hair bouncing around her face. “I thought it was the homophobia. Such antiquated ideas.” 

“Oh, yeah,” says the Doctor, internally whacking herself on the forehead. When will she start remembering she’s a woman now? “That, too.” 

“So, you like history?” Amy asks, sliding down the wall until she was sitting next to Rory, clasping his hand between her own. 

“Why do you ask?” The Doctor says, blindsided by the sudden topic change, and then remembers that they’re trapped in a lift in the History Museum. Oh, this is really an off day. “Oh, yeah, I like history. No, I love history! Oodles and oodles of it. My wife, you know, in the library, she reads history books all the time. Sometimes it feels like I was actually there.”

“Yeah, I think I know what you mean,” Rory says, a little sardonically. “It feels like I was in Ancient Rome just two thousand years ago.” 

“Really?” The Doctor asks, a little excited. “Just two thousand years ago? Were you two married recently?” 

“Yeah, less than a year ago…I think…why do you ask?” Even the Doctor could tell that she’d slipped up. Rory was at least a little suspicious. She had to be extremely careful. Why was it so hard to keep track of the Pond’s timelines? She never had that difficulty with Rose, or Bill, or poor sweet Martha. Clara, on the other hand…

“Jodie?” Amy asked, and the Doctor took an embarrassingly long time to remember that she was Jodie. “Why are you asking about our wedding?”

“Oh, you know. Ancient Rome…weddings…never have the one without the other!” She says brightly. “But you were telling me about your favorite part of the museum,” she deflects rapidly. She’s always been good at deflecting.

“I was?” Says Rory, but Amy talks straight over him, as usual.

“I like the Art Gallery, especially the Van Goughs. He’s my favorite painter. Have you seen his sunflowers? And River here likes the Darwin Centre, but I think it’s just because she’s an archaeologist. And Rory likes…well, everything, I guess. He doesn’t really have a favorite.”

“Actually, I…” starts Rory, but he is cut off again. 

“I also like the Tyrannosaurus Rex. You know, it moves, and it roars! It scared me so much as a little girl, but ever since I’ve wanted to see a dinosaur like that. Oh! And I love the…” 

Oh, Pond, the Doctor thinks, almost wistfully. If only you knew. Dinosaurs. On a spaceship. With Queen Nefertiti and John Riddell and your father-in-law. Just you wait. 

“You know,” Rory says, when Amy finally pauses for breath. “I was about to say that my favorite exhibit is the Pandorica. I could watch it for two thousand years without stopping.” Amy smiles softly up at him, and River turned away to wipe a single tear. The Doctor puts on her best confused face as her hearts shatter to pieces in her chest. Two thousand years is barely a drop in the bucket compared to the time since she last saw the Ponds, and she still thinks of them nearly every day (depending on your definition of day. It can get so confusing). 

While her wife and in-laws were all looking away, the Doctor surreptitiously points her sonic screwdriver at the lift cables, and surreptitiously coughs as she pushes the button down, to cover the trademark sonic noice. Nobody other than the Doctor even notices as the lift slowly begins to rise.


	2. We Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor makes her (very poor) excuses and attempt to escape her old companions undetected. But the Tardis is being very, very uncooperative.

Amy raises her arms triumphantly above her head as she steps out of the lift, brushing by the confused repairmen ( _I could’a sworn there was at least an hour’s work here_ , one is saying, literally scratching his head). “Solid ground! Oh, I could almost kiss it.” 

“The only thing you’ll be kissing, Mrs. Williams, is me,” Rory says in a rare show of bravado, dipping Amy backwards and pecking her on the lips as she laughs. 

“What do you say, Jodie? Shall we do a little kissing as well?” River asks, and for the first time in all of her reincarnations, the Doctor has to look up at River’s smirking face. She briefly entertains the idea of letting River kiss her, feeling her wife’s lips on hers for the first time in centuries. 

“No,” she says firmly. “I don’t think my wife would like it.”

“Oh,” River pouts, “she’s no fun.” 

“She’s a splendid amount of fun,” the Doctor says indignantly. “She’s the funnest.” 

“Whatever you say, darling.” _Darling,_ The Doctor notices with a bittersweet pang, _not sweetie._

“So, Jodie,” Amy says, still holding Rory’s hand with a small, slightly goofy smile on her face. It’s nice, the Doctor decides, to see her smile. “D’you want to join us on a tour around the museum? I know you’ve been here before, but we have a couple secrets. For example,” she says, leaning close to the doctor’s ear, “there’s a passageway behind the Venus painting in the Rosewood gallery that leads to the Egyptian wing.” 

_Of course I know about the Venus passageway. I showed it to you when we were being chased by a Racnoss and her army of clones. We had to jump in, and you landed on me, and Rory would have been cross if he were there, which he wasn’t, because at the time he technically didn’t exist. We defeated the Racnoss with your compact mirror and a piece of a 10,000 year old mummy. You hugged me, and you were so happy._

“Secret passageway? Really? I had no clue,” the Doctor lies. _Rule number one._ “In any case,” she says, brushing her hands together a few times for emphasis, “Thanks so much for the invite, but I’ve got to get a shift on. I’ve got a…thing. A very important thing. Don’t question the thing, it’s a thing. Nice meeting you all, Amy, Rory, River.” She hitches one of her braces higher onto her shoulder in a hopefully casual gesture, turns on her heel, and sets off down the long hallway. Out of the corner of her eye, the nearby paintings are suspiciously blurry for the Realist Movement. 

“So mysterious,” River calls after her. “Not even one little hint?” 

“Bye now!” She says, waving over her shoulder, so much false cheer that even Rory can definitely tell that something’s off. “Don’t follow me!” 

Of course, two pairs of precariously high heels clack down the tiled floor after her. She walks faster, willing the tears to stay in her eyes. A pair of sensible shoes (oh, Rory) joins them, and, against all logical thought (if you don’t run, they won’t run; running is practically your signature move, they’ll know who you are; Rory has military training and enough people to strategize) she breaks into a run. 

The footsteps behind her speed up as she pulls open the door to the stairway, but slow as shedashes down five flights, coat flying behind her. Yet another reason why she’s never taken to high heels. 

Outside, in the cold rain, she runs from one street to another in a blind panic, somewhere between shaking her family (maybe she should’ve called _them_ the fam)(no offense no her current fam, of course. They’re the best! Hopefully they’ll be done resting up soon) and trying to find the Tardis. She’d left it in an alley, near a dumpster, she knows that for certain. The issue is, there are so _many_ alleys with dumpsters, and none of them seem to also contain a certain blue box.

Her hair is plastered to her forehead as she finally pulls out her sonic and begins scanning for alien technology. No Tardis, but there’s a double heartbeat coming from just one street over, scanning positive for Timelord DNA. Unless The Master (or Missy) is somehow here to make this entire thing even more fun, River’s nearly found her. Panicking now, she doubles back and runs down an alleyway so small she didn’t even see it her first time through. 

She hits a dead end. Pats the brickwork down, just in case this alley was the hidden entrance to a trap street, but no such luck. She listens for her pursuers, but any sounds that River or Amy’s high heels are making is drowned out by the rumble of thunder and pelting of rain. 

She tries really hard to think of a good alibi, a reason why she’d be acting so strange and running away from these extremely nice people, but her mind is frustratingly blank. She scans for the Tardis again, but it’s nowhere to be found.

“Please, please don’t leave me again,” she calls to the sky, giving up on her plan to be all surreptitious. “I didn’t know I was crossing my own timeline, I truly didn’t. Come back, old girl.” Sleet stings her face as she looks up into the sky, eyes blinking madly as she tries to keep them open. Her hearts are beating double time, and she doesn’t know if it’s from exhaustion or emotion. 

When she looks down again, wiping the water (which was completely rain, no tears, none at all)from her eyes, the Tardis is there. 

“There you are, you beautiful thing!” She cheers, running forwards to give the box an awkward hug. She quickly realizes how odd that would look to any passersby (not that there are any, but she's the Oncoming Storm with a reputation to uphold) and releases the box. She gives it a quick pat, pushes the door open, walks inside, peels off her sopping coat, and hangs it on the handy new coat rack, before turning to face the main console. 

She notices Amy first, standing very close to the Doctor, arms crossed. She takes an involuntary step back, and her cheeks heat up as she sees River leaning on the console itself, idly turning various knobs. Miserably, she turns to see Rory stands awkwardly in the corner, probably missing his favorite seat. 

“Oh my god!” She tries weakly, bringing her hands to her cheeks. “It’s bigger on the inside!” 

“Oi, cut it out,” Amy says. She’s cross. The Doctor remembers when she used to be that cross all the time. Maybe it just has something to do with being Scottish. “We know who you are.” 

  
“Oh, so you know I’m the Doctor’s new companion?” The Doctor says, thinking fast. 

“If you’re the Doctor’s new companion,” Amy says, moving closer to the Doctor. “What’s your name?” 

“Yasmin Kahn,” the Doctor responds immediately. 

“Funny,” Rory says, crossing his arms in a pale imitation of his wife, “you don’t look like a Yasmin Khan.” 

“That’s racist!” The Doctor says indignantly. “I’ll tell the Doctor, and he won’t like it at all. Now how do you know how to fly the Tardis?” 

“Stop it, Sweetie,” River commands in a quiet, icy voice. “We know.”

“Oh, really?” The Doctor asks, her voice going all high and squeaky. “Oh, really?” She repeats, more fiercely, blinking back the tears threatening to spill from her eyes. “Good, so I don’t have to catch you up on anything, then. You must know who the Silence really are, and why they kidnapped Amy and River. You must know that I used to be a white haired scotsman, and I was a really, _really_ good guitar player. You must know all about the Master and Missy and Me, and Clara and Bill and Nardole and all the others I’ve lost along the way. You know about the Zygons and the Confession Dial and the Angels taking Manhattan. And of course,” she said, gasping great gulps of air, her face streaming with tears that she could no longer blame on the weather, “I don’t have to tell you that I found Gallifrey and lost it again. It _burned,_ River, Amy, Rory. It burned. And you all surely know that I haven’t seen any of you in tens of thousands of years, maybe even billions. But I still think of you every single solitary day. _Every day._ ” 

Her knees buckle out from under her, and Rory rushes forwards to catch her in his arms just before she hits the hard metal ground. 

  
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, “It was a poor choice of words. We didn’t know. We didn’t know anything.” 

“Rory the Roman,” the Doctor nearly whispers, doing her best imitation of a smile, the smile she used to have with the bow ties. The familiar smile. “Two thousand years outside a box. And Amelia Pond, the girl who waited. The girl who waited for me. How did you do it?”

“Oh, Raggedy Man,” Amy says, kneeling beside them. “Woman, whatever. It was worth it.” 

“I didn’t mean to come,” the Doctor says, mopping at her eyes with the shoulder of her t-shirt. “I was just sitting alone in the Tardis, and thinking about how today was your yearly trip to the Museum, and suddenly she was just here.” 

“I was wondering why you looked so shocked when we got on the lift,” Amy laughs. “It was like you were seeing a ghost.” The Doctor tries to smile again, but it’s more like a pained grimace. “So,” Amy says, seriously this time. “New York, yeah?” 

“Yeah, but promise me you won’t think about it,” the Doctor says. “Just enjoy your time with him. It’ll be the happiest time in his whole life.”

  
“With you,” Rory says. “You’re still him, just like River is still Mels.” River smiles, just a bit, but when she notices the Doctor looking over at her, she quickly turns away. Rory looks back and forth between them a few times, his forehead scrunching as he lifts the Doctor gently to her feet and sits her down on a chair. “Well,” he says, “You’re not getting rid of us this easily, but I’m fairly knackered. Is our room still here?” 

“Of course,” the Doctor says. 

“The one with the bunk beds?” Amy asks, wrinkling her nose. 

“Of course! What was I supposed to do? I don’t want more human time lords out there. Sorry, River.” River ignores the Doctor completely.

“I'll remind you,” Amy says with dignity, and quite a lot of grief, “That I’m quite unable to have children after what that Madam Kovarian did to me. And also,” a bit of playfulness seeps back into her voice, “That we still had bunk beds on the night of our honeymoon.” 

“Oh, ew!” The Doctor says. “Yuckity yuck yuck. First left, third right, fifth left, third door straight ahead. Don't do anything gross.” Amy laughs and tousles her hair just the way she used to. Rory offers her his arm and they ascend the stairs together, to their room, which was now as familiar with waiting as they both were. 

“River,” the Doctor says. River ignores her, fiddling with a knob on the Tardis console. “River,” she tries again, “I’m sorry.” 

“Why, Doctor?” River whips around, fire in her eyes, jamming down on a button that causes the entire Tardis to flash red. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” 

“You and I have already had our last meeting,” the Doctor says. “We’ve already said goodbye. I can’t just meddle in and re-write everything. It could change our lives.”

“And the library? I end up in a library? What sort of rubbish is that?” River says angrily, stomping towards the Doctor, her heels echoing around the room. The Doctor’s head is beginning to hurt. 

“It has to happen,” she whispers, making River quiet down to hear her. “I don’t know why, I don’t know how you got there, but I know that it has to happen.”

“I can change it,” River hisses, stepping even closer. “Time can change. It can be re-written.” 

“Not one line,” the Doctor says sadly, yet another tear rolling down her cheek. “Not a moment of our time together, River. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

And suddenly, River’s lips are on hers. And she's standing up, curling herself around River’s body, tilting her chin up for the first time. It’s just as she’d remembered, but somehow better. A bit wetter, too. And a little more snot than usual. The Doctor grabs at River’s hair, digs her fingers deep into the curls, and pulls hard. River groans, long and low, and parts the Doctor had never noticed before start to wake up. 

“I’m still very cross with you,” River pants, pulling away just far enough to talk. 

“I know,” the Doctor says, pressing still closer to her wife’s body. “I know you are. Wouldn’t be Amy’s daughter if you weren’t.” Against her forehead, the Doctor can feel River’s smile.

“I’ll put all that on hold if you’ll do one thing for me, sweetie,” River says, that purr back in her voice. The Doctor’s face heats again, and River laughs. “I _must_ explore this new body of yours.”

“But _River,_ ” The Doctor whines, “I just told Amy and Rory not to get up to anything, and I don’t want to set a bad example.” 

“Then by all means,” River says, stepping away and taking the Doctor’s hand, “let _me_ do the bad parts.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think we all deserve a little something happy today, yeah? So here you go! Enjoy. If you know the FRIENDS quote from the first chapter, or you just really really need to see them happy, drop me a line and I'll drop you a bonus scene. Stay safe, love you all. Thanks for reading!!! ❤️❤️❤️

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Kudos and comments are, as always, the highlights of my life. The whole thing is written, and I'll add the next (and probably final) chapter within the next few weeks. To get it sooner, complete this challenge: tell me the FRIENDS quote in this chapter, and who says it! 
> 
> Have a great day, stay safe, wash ur hands. I love you all❤️❤️❤️


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